Birdfeed

Day One at SXSW

Design is in the details: Naz Hamid showed off some great pieces, but I could’ve used more details about his design process. Not to be snarky. I think the audience was ready for a little more depth, even if it was the first presentation of the day.

Core Conversation - When your web company is getting BIG: This was a nice surprise. What was meant to be a small open conversation became a very large open conversation, but it remained helpful and orderly. About 30 of us had an organic open-ended discussion with a wide range of entrepreneurs about the challenges in running a web business. I gained a lot of insight on what might lay ahead for Canary, and so I should have no excuse to not hit 100 employees in 6 months. Wow. Even to joke about that number gives me a brain freeze.

Opening Remarks - Henry Jenkins and Steven Johnson: This was a really nuanced discussion on tech and pop culture. Nerd that I am tho, I perked up when it turned to Harry Potter.

Ten things we learned at 37signals: Some great insights from the ever pithy and quotable Jason Fried.

Worst Website Ever: Hilarious. 7 pitches for terrible ideas for web sites. Ways to enable spammers, sell your self body and soul to shareholders, a social network for the casually ill. The clear winner was the opaque presentation Merlin Mann made for Flocked Up! If anyone can tell even partially what that site would do then they weren’t listening close enough.

After the day events we went out for food, and then walked (pretty far I might add) to the 16bit party. We get there at 10, precisely on time, and they’re already over capacity and we’re put in line with a few hundred others. If you didn’t see that SXSW was getting bigger and bigger then here’s the proof. We bail and hit our second party option, which was far more bichen I’m sure. It was a laptop battle thrown by Amoda, so John and I were in our element. We stayed for the first round, but to us there was already a clear winner. This underage kid destroyed the others. Check him out: http://www.myspace.com/themadisoneffectWe decided to leave in time to get some sleep, but just as we were pushing the door to exit we decide to try this interactive public cell phone game. It was part of the digital arts exhibition. You call in to a number and then guide your phone icon across the screen, and then wait for the light streams to accumulate and your power to grow before you hit 5 to explode… yeah, it’s impossible to describe, but ridiculously addictive. We had a blast getting into a high score battle with a few other players. gophoneplay.com
So then we came back for a little sleep. I got about 4.5 hours, but that’s about what I get at home with the baby so I’m good to go.
Off to day 2.